SOURCE: Wicker, Cecil V. “Young's Fear of Death; Evidence from the Night Thoughts.” In Edward Young and the Fear of Death: A Study of Romantic Melancholy, 66-79. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1952.

[In the following essay, Wicker argues that Young's personal fear of death permeates Night Thoughts, and that while his hope of immortality is evident, his uncertainty runs throughout his work.]

Pursue thy theme, and fight the fear of Death.

Night Thoughts, Night IV

Young's most important work, The Complaint; or, Night Thoughts, has been left for separate consideration, since it is here that the dread of death all but dominates everything else. Fear is the very pattern of the poem, fear of that inevitable end which the poet could not forget, which he hoped and prayed might be “easy,” which, with a peculiarly pagan emphasis on the word, he regarded as his “fate,” which he wrote to overcome. Young states in the preface that the “occasion of this poem was real,” referring to the three deaths “ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn” which caused his grief, but the amount of mourning for Lucia, Narcissa, and Philander in the poem is inconsiderable compared to the attention devoted to Young's fears for himself; indeed, the “real occasion” is lost sight of and the mourned are forgotten by poet and reader alike most of the time. Much more than half of the poem is devoted to attempts to prove man immortal, and always with the express idea of robbing death of its terrors, yet the terror is not overcome. The “real occasion” of the poem, as of Young's melancholy, seems to have been this fear of death.

It would be as cumbersome as it is unnecessary to quote all the references to Young's fear of his own death that appear in the Night Thoughts. It is never long absent from the lines.

          From short (as usual) and disturb'd repose
I wake: how happy they who wake no more!
Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave.
I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams
Tumultuous; where my wreck'd desponding thought
From wave to wave of fancied misery
At random drove, her helm of reason lost;
Though now restored, 'tis only change of pain,
(A bitter change!) severer for severe.
The day too short for my distress; and night,
E'en in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is sunshine to the colour of my fate.(1)

The “wreck'd desponding thought” and “fancied misery” are as much a part of his waking dreams as of those in sleep, for the “fate” is certain. He invokes “silence and darkness” to assist him, and the thought of passing time reminds him again of the certainty of his fate.

                                                                                My hopes and fears
Start up alarm'd, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down—on what? A fathomless abyss;
A dread eternity! how surely mine!(2)

The “sudden dread” is

Grief's sharpest thorn hard pressing on my breast.(3)

The deaths of Narcissa and Philander cause as much fear for himself as grief for them. Young leaves no doubt anywhere that he is most concerned with himself and his own “fate.” And he includes not only the deaths of Narcissa, Philander, and Lucia as

                                                                                                                                            an aid
To chase our thoughtlessness, fear, pride, and guilt,(4)

but all those he has lost by death. That his death may be easy, freed from the horrors that he pictured too well, is frequently his wish.

Typical of Young's true attitude is the whole close of Night III. He has “convinced” himself, though but temporarily, that death ought not to be feared, and with brave declamation bids it welcome, but, after all, though death has been sung as the “deliverer” and the “rewarder,” though it is even “the prince of peace,” it is still the “king of terrors” and the passage so full of assertion ends in a question.

After the triumphant eulogy of death as the “crown of life” at the close of Night III, the title of Night IV may seem a little surprising; it is, “The Christian Triumph: Containing the Only Cure For the Fear of Death; and Proper Sentiments of Heart on that Inestimable Blessing.” The persistence of the fear is the whole reason for this section of the poem.

How deep implanted in the breast of man
The dread of death! I sing its sov'reign cure.(5)

This is followed by one of Young's many fruitless efforts to rationalize his fear.

          Why start at death? where is he? death arrived
Is past: not come, or gone; he's never here.
Ere hope, sensation fails; black-boding man
Receives, not suffers, death's tremendous blow.
The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave;
The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm;
These are the bugbears of a winter's eve,
The terrors of the living, not the dead:
Imagination's fool, and error's wretch,
Man makes a death which nature never made;
Then on the point of his own fancy falls,
And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.(6)

No “bugbear of a winter's eve,” however, was the fear of death to Young, but a steadfast, unconquerable foe. The emphasis upon imagination is typical and important; Young's dependence on reason to rescue him from “fancied ills” and his final despair of reason will be dealt with later. But the fear is not less real because imagined, and Young knew it only too well.

The “only cure for the fear of death” promised in the title to Night IV is religion with its hope of immortality. The mystery of salvation through Christ's sacrifice, the redemption of man by the death on the cross, proves man immortal, and death is “vanquish'd.” Only repentance “subdues the fear of death.” The beauties of the night sky are glorified as symbols of God's love. The joy of religion is sung, a religion that frees the soul from this world; religion is “triumph o'er the tomb.” But the fear of death is still there and is still triumphant. Faith is not sufficient; reason is superior and must be depended on.

Fond as we are, and justly fond, of faith,
Reason, we grant, demands our first regard;
The mother honour'd, as the daughter dear.
Reason the root, fair Faith is but the flow'r:
The fading flow'r shall die, but Reason lives
Immortal, as her Father in the skies.(7)

But in the end reason also proves unavailing. Still,

‘Th' importance of contemplating the tomb;
Why men decline it; suicide's foul birth;
The various kinds of grief; the faults of age;
And death's dread character—invite my song.’(8)

And reason fades before the fear. Young, in this extremity, characteristically devotes a long passage to suicide, its baseness, its “horrors double,” its cause, and its lesson. Death is described with dreadful detail, and the moral lesson is that “such sad scenes” are sent to man “in pity”

To melt him down, like wax, and then impress,
Indelible, death's image on his heart;
Bleeding for others, trembling for himself.(9)

Death has “arts to lay our fears asleep”; he comes disguised, and is therefore unexpected.

Scarce with more sudden terror and surprise
From his black mask of nitre, touch'd by fire,
He bursts, expands, roars, blazes, and devours.(10)

Nights VI and VII return to arguments for immortality, and Young uses everything he can think of, Lorenzo's vices, pride, ambition, greed, and worse, even crimes, to prove his point.

‘Thou shalt not covet,’ is a wise command;
But bounded to the wealth the sun surveys:
Look farther, the command stands quite reversed,
And av'rice is a virtue most divine.
Is faith a refuge for our happiness?
Most sure, and is it not for reason too?
Nothing this world unriddles, but the next,
Whence inextinguishable thirst of gain?
From inextinguishable life in man,
Man, if not meant, by worth, to reach the skies,
Had wanted wing to fly so far in guilt.
Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice:
Yet still their root is immortality.(11)

His reasoning reveals his desperate need to convince himself, the need to conquer fear. The fear of death is not rare or intermittent, but constant through long periods of years, if not throughout life, and is far stronger than hope of salvation.

          O the long dark approach, through years of pain,
Death's gall'ry (might I dare to call it so)
With dismal doubt and sable terror hung,
Sick Hope's pale lamp its only glimm'ring ray:
There, Fate my melancholy walk ordain'd,
Forbid Self-love itself to flatter, there.(12)

The mind, or rather the imagination, exaggerates the fear of death.

Night VII continues the arguments for “the Nature, Proof, and Importance of Immortality,” begun in Night VI, which ends with the poet's promise, or threat, to Lorenzo.

                                                                                Here cease we: but, ere long
More powerful proof shall take the field against thee,
Stronger than death, and smiling at the tomb.(13)

The two books are jointly titled, “The Infidel Reclaimed,” but though Lorenzo personifies the Infidel, all arguments are directed toward Young's persistent foe, the fear of death. Why man must fear death, he does not know, but immortality will compensate for the pain.

Or if abortively poor man must die,
Nor reach what reach he might, why die in dread?
Why curst with foresight? Wise to misery?
Why of his proud prerogative the prey?(14)

Doubts of immortality continue to arise, and to be voiced, always imputed to Lorenzo, but always overhung with the shadow of Young's fear.

          Couldst thou persuade me, the next life could fail
Our ardent wishes, how should I pour out
My bleeding heart in anguish, new, as deep!
Oh! with what thoughts, thy hope, and my despair,
Abhorr'd Annihilation blasts the soul,
And wide extends the bounds of human wo!(15)

Young follows this with a long passage describing the terrors of annihilation, and nowhere is he more vivid. The peculiarly personal tone that is Young's dominates this passage, though these are supposedly Lorenzo's beliefs which Young abhors.

          ‘Undrawn no more!—Behind the cloud of death,
Once I beheld a sun; a sun which gilt
That sable cloud, and turn'd it all to gold.
How the grave's alter'd! Fathomless as hell!
A real hell to those who dreamt of heav'n.
Annihilation! how it yawns before me!
Next moment I may drop from thought, from sense,
The privilege of angels, and of worms,
An outcast from existence! and this spirit,
This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul,
This particle of energy divine,
Which travels nature, flies from star to star,
And visits gods, and emulates their pow'rs,
For ever is extinguish'd. Horror! death!
Death of that death I fearless once survey'd!—
When horror universal shall descend,
And heav'n's dark concave urn all human race,
On that enormous, unrefunding tomb.’(16)

The Infidel's persistence moves Young to ask,

                                                            And is there nought on earth,
But a long train of transitory forms,
Rising, and breaking, millions in an hour?
Bubbles of a fantastic deity, blown up
In sport, and then in cruelty destroy'd?(17)

And

Say, in this rapid tide of human ruin,
Is there no rock, on which man's tossing thought
Can rest from terror, dare his fate survey,
And boldly think it something to be born?(18)

Have Young's fears been stilled? Argument has been piled on argument. Death is terrible, but less so if man is immortal. All hinges then on man's immortality. It is the key to all. In Night IV arguments are drawn from the Atonement, from God's Love, from all the various aspects of nature. In Nights VI and VII arguments are drawn from the world and man's life; desperately Young reaches out to grasp anything, man's worst offenses even, that can be twisted to his purpose. After all this, he turns to hope. The last part of Night VII, some hundred and seventy-three lines, is a complete confession that arguments and reason have failed the poet, and that his only dependence is on hope. Faith, which he has already said is not to be relied on, since reason is a surer guide, now must come to his rescue.

Eternal life is Nature's ardent wish:
What ardently we wish, we soon believe.(19)

Even “disbelief” is evidence to Young, and “unawares, asserts immortal life.” Hope is now all his comfort.

Joy has her tears, and transport has her death:
Hope, like a cordial, innocent, though strong,
Man's heart, at once, inspirits and serenes;
Nor makes him pay his wisdom for his joys.(20)

But the book closes with a more than implied doubt.

If there is weight in an eternity,
Let the grave listen;—and be graver still.(21)

In Night VIII Young returns to inveighing against the pleasures of the world. There is very little attention given to either death or the hereafter. Strangely enough the poet gives directions for attaining joy and happiness in that world which he has so contemned, nor are all of these directions entirely religious. This more than strengthens the suspicion, supported here and there by direct statement,²² that Young did not find life quite so dismal nor the world so thoroughly bad as he was driven to picture it for the sake of his argument. If this suspicion is not well-founded, it is difficult to explain the purpose of Night VIII, for, though it is a long complaint of life, it does not deal with the deaths of Lucia, Narcissa, and Philander, or with immortality, or to any great extent with death at all. There is one reference only to Philander, but Lorenzo is the recipient of endless moral admonitions against the vice and folly of a life of pleasure. There is one striking passage about suicide, though,²³ and there are occasional references to death's terrors. One of the most interesting points in this book is the distinction between Lorenzo's “Reason,” which is useless, and the wisdom, fed by reason, of the “serious man.”

Night IX, “The Consolation,” brings us back to the contemplation of death. “Howling furies ring the doleful knell” once more. The world itself is a grave. The flood is pictured and the second destruction of the world, by fire, is foretold. As elsewhere, Young seems to confuse the end of his life with the end of the world. The last scene of this world is described and “consternation turns the good man pale.” Hope hardly is left. Young says,

I think of nothing else; I see! I feel it!(24)

Doubt, grief, and fear, in spite of all efforts, are not gone; hence they are rationalized, justified, as good.

Affliction is the good man's shining scene:
Prosperity conceals his brightest ray:
As night to stars, no lustre gives to man.
Heroes in battle, pilots in the storm,
And virtue in calamities, admire.
The crown of manhood is a winter-joy.(25)

This process of rationalization permits him to speak of the terrors of death as kind, but none of Young's almost endless arguments has succeeded in dissociating death and terror.

Young not only confuses his own death with that of the world, but invariably views this finality in its darkest aspects. So he had done thirty-three years earlier in The Last Day, and so he does in several passages in the Night Thoughts. There is an “eternal curtain”; “universal midnight” or “eternal darkness” reigns; the picture is always painted in symbols of blackness, the blackness of Young's thoughts. The point is not merely that the ultimate holocaust of orthodox theology is sui generis dreadful to contemplate, but that Young treats it in his own way. Frequently, as in the whole passage which discusses the inevitable destruction of the world, Young egotistically identifies his own dissolution with the terrible event. Besides this, perhaps out of Christian humility and a sense of his own guilt, but more plausibly because of the gloomy shadow of fear that darkened his mind, he never goes beyond a wish for salvation, and usually implies the worst fate for himself. Finally, the conflict between belief and doubt, life eternal and the equally eternal terrors of the tomb, between reason and fear, is never done. Once more toward the end of Night IX the existence of God and the immortality of man must be “proved.” This time “imagination,” “the senses,” “passion,” are to be excluded.

Wake all to reason;—let her reign alone;—(26)

The argument then begins with Descartes' “Cogito ergo sum.”

          ‘What am I? and from whence?—I nothing know,
But that I am; and, since I am, conclude
Something eternal! had there e'er been nought,
Nought still had been: eternal there must be.—
But what eternal?—why not human race?’(27)

The reasoning soon falls back on the argument from design, beyond which Young never got, and ends by assuming what it set out to prove.

Grant, then, invisible, eternal, Mind;
That granted, all is solved.(28)

Flaws in Young's reasoning are not difficult to find²⁹ nor are they very important; what is important is the persistence of doubt, the never ended need to prove, the fear that would not permit final belief. The argument continues to the end of “The Consolation,” as Night IX is entitled; the shadow of the fear darkens the effort to rejoice and gives the lie to the optimistic tone which Young assumes for the time being.³⁰ And characteristically, having staked all on reason and finding reason incapable of settling his doubts, Young decides that man was not intended to know and falls back on love, faith, piety.

          Not deeply to discern, not much to know,
Mankind was born to wonder, and adore.(31)

But to Young faith is as insufficient, as unsatisfying, as reason before was found. Somewhere he must turn, for doubt and fear still hold him.

Bent on destruction! and in love with death!
Not all these luminaries, quench'd at once,
Were half so sad, as one benighted mind,
Which gropes for happiness, and meets despair.
How, like a widow in her weeds, the Night,
Amid her glimmering tapers, silent sits!
How sorrowful, how desolate, she weeps
Perpetual dews, and saddens nature's scene!
A scene more sad sin makes the darken'd soul,
All comfort kills, nor leaves one spark alive.(32)

Though this is intended to be the awful state of mind of the infidel, the undevout Lorenzo, it is Young himself who “gropes for happiness, and meets despair,” who wavers between reason and faith and finds that neither ends the torture. Young's vacillation between reason and faith is one of the most striking features of the Night Thoughts. No believer in freedom of will, he even appeals to that. Often he escapes the dilemma momentarily by using the terms wisdom, thought, or prudence, which are neither faith nor reason alone. The emotions, the senses, imagination, intellect, hope, are each trusted and distrusted by turns. What confuses the whole question is that at times Lorenzo's senses are scorned and the poet's superior reason is upheld and at other times Lorenzo's intellect and reason are condemned while the poet relies on faith or the evidence of his senses.³³ Now he turns back to “thought” and “the proof of common sense,” and the argument is never done. The catalogue of death's terrors is rehearsed; once more the warning against the evil world is uttered; again his own death is anticipated and the question, “When will it end with me?” is asked. Nowhere is Young more orthodox than in the Address to the Deity which follows. But Young's prayer for himself reveals the power of his fear in the petition for a gentle death and in the conception of God's love as “death of death” and “cordial of despair.”

                              ‘Look down—down—down,
On a poor breathing particle in dust,
Or, lower,—an immortal in his crimes.
His crimes forgive! forgive his virtues, too!
Those smaller faults, half converts to the right;
Nor let me close these eyes, which never more
May see the sun (though night's descending scale
Now weighs up morn,) unpitied, and unbless'd!
In Thy displeasure dwells eternal pain;
Pain, our aversion; pain, which strikes me now:
And, since all pain is terrible to man,
Though transient, terrible; at Thy good hour,
Gently, ah gently, lay me in my bed,
My clay-cold bed! by nature, now, so near;
By nature, near; still nearer by disease!
Till then, be this, an emblem of my grave;
Let it out-preach the preacher; every night
Let it outcry the boy at Philip's ear;
That tongue of death! that herald of the tomb!
And when (the shelter of thy wing implored)
My senses, soothed, shall sink in soft repose;
O sink this truth still deeper in my soul,
Suggested by my pillow, sign'd by fate,
First, in fate's volume, at the page of man—
Man's sickly soul, though turn'd and toss'd for ever,
From side to side, can rest on nought but Thee;
Here, in full trust; hereafter, in full joy;
On Thee, the promised, sure, eternal down
Of spirits, toil'd in travel through this vale.
Nor of that pillow shall my soul despond;
For—Love almighty! Love almighty! (sing
Exult, creation!) Love almighty reigns!
That death of death! that cordial of despair!
And loud eternity's triumphant song!’(34)

The “thought of death” is “sole victor of its dread,” and the whole purpose of men's lives “is to forget their graves,” as the sole end of religion is to convert “pain to peace.” And the poem ends with the world destroyed.

When like a taper, all these suns expire;
When Time, like him of Gaza in his wrath,
Plucking the pillars that support the world,
In Nature's ample ruins lies entomb'd;
And Midnight, universal Midnight! reigns.(35)

Night IX finds Young asking,

And have I been complaining, then so long?
Complaining of his favours, pain, and death?(36)

He apparently could not convince himself that death might come to him in any form but one of terror. He is utterly incapable of believing in death as benevolent, gentle, or truly desirable, of taking such an attitude as Browning's for example. For him death is “this king of terrors,” and though he may speak of the grave as man's “subterranean road to bliss,” there are hundreds of horrid details used to describe the awful tomb, and death is still “insidious death.” Death is a personal antagonist, “that mighty hunter,” “the coming foe,” “the tyrant,” “insatiate archer,” “the murderer,” the great devourer,

                                                  whose restless iron tongue
Calls daily for his millions at a meal.(37)

More often than not death is personified, as is fate; indeed, very frequently the two ideas are used interchangeably.³⁸ Death is “gen'ral horror,” and “feeble nature's dread!” Young also morbidly imagines death in terms of gaping wounds, blood, and torture, with many references to stabbing and murder. The worm, decay, and scattered bones are other frequent details. Death, however, is occasionally viewed as a refuge and is bravely welcomed, but the grimmer aspects always return, as they returned years later in Resignation. When Young views death as other than terrifying, he is striving to convince himself that by thinking of eternal bliss he can forget the terrors of the tomb. Thus his lengthiest and best arguments for immortality are but a rationalization of his fear, a means of escape. In the same way he rationalizes the conflict between his love of life and of the world and the fate which he knows cannot be escaped. To accomplish this, the world and all that belongs to it must be made as worthless, ugly, and base as possible. He tries to comfort himself for the painful necessity of leaving the world by making life seem unattractive and terrible, by making the life he clings to seem so mean that he will no longer love it and want it.

Who cheapens life, abates the fear of death.

This rationalization of Young's fear grows inevitably from the irresoluble conflict³⁹ between the will to live and the frustrated ambition and disappointments of his life, between death as release from a life of emptiness, frustration, and pain on the one hand and on the other death as a dreaded fate, uncertain, dark, terrifying. This conflict is manifested in the wavering between reason and faith, belief and doubt, resignation and renewed alarm. The poet's inability to decide the issue appears in his love of solitude, his complaint of life, his retreat to rural Welwyn, and his love of Night, Silence, and Darkness, all three symbols of his need to escape a problem beyond his powers to solve. In the simplest terms the conflict was waged between hope of immortality and fear, both of a ghastly death and burial and one which might prove eternal. Only the hope of immortality could make the terror of dying endurable and Young found no means to be sure. In this conflict and Young's failure to resolve it are the bases for the poet's melancholy.

Notes

1. Night I, 6-17.

2. Night I, 62-65.

3. Night I, 439.

4. Night III, 276.

5. Night IV, 4-5.

6. Night IV, 6-17. Young does not make Shakespeare's distinction between the coward's many deaths and the brave man's one, but imputes the fear of death to “man,” in itself an indication of the tenacity of the idea in his mind.

7. Night IV, 749-754.

8. Night V, 295-298.

9. Night V, 508-510.

10. Night V, 879-881.

11. Night VII, 459-471.

12. Night VI, 11-16.

13. Night VI, 817-819.

14. Night VII, 96-99.

15. Night VII, 644-649.

16. Night VII, 813-830.

17. Night VII, 866-870. This question reminds one very strongly of Hardy's later questioning, as the following statement also recalls Hardy.

    He that is born is listed: life is war;
    Eternal war with woe.

    Night II, 9-10.

18. Night VII, 906-909.

19. Night VII, 1309-1310.

20. Night VII, 1462-1465.

21. Night VII, 1478-1479. The play on words is meant for force, not humor.

22. This, for example, from Night IV, 35-36:

    But grant to life (and just it is to grant
    To lucky life) some perquisites of joy.

23. Night VIII, 1323-1337.

24. Night IX, 264.

25. Night IX, 406-411.

26. Night IX, 1444.

27. Night IX, 1449-1453.

28. Night IX, 1486-1487.

29. Young himself was satisfied with his own logic. See Night IX, 1507-1509.

                        If, in this chain, Lorenzo finds no flaw,
    Let it for ever bind him to belief.
    And where the link, in which a flaw he finds?

30. To the same argument Young returned fifteen years later in Resignation.

31. Night IX, 1858-1859.

32. Night IX, 1974-1983

33. Dozens of references would be needed to illustrate this matter fully, but see especially Night IV, 701-766 and Night VIII, 600-622 et passim.

34. Night IX, 2313-2346. The italics are in the text and are probably Dr. Boyd's for other editions do not have them.

35. Night IX, 2430-2434.

36. Night IX, 376-377

37. Night I, 172-173.

38. Young also personifies Night, Silence, Darkness, the Stars, the Moon, the Sun, as well as Death and Fate. This is all quite in the neo-classical tradition, but it also is rather non-Christian, especially the frequent reference to Fate. We have previously noted Young's pagan use of the word immortality; this occurs even in the Night Thoughts. It would be as impossible to adjust Young's emphasis on fate to Christian theology, as it would be to reconcile his references in this ostensibly orthodox poem to gods.

39. Clark sees the deeper cause of Young's melancholy in his philosophy, his “failure to mediate between extremes.” The conflict was, however, more religious than philosophical. Young was not much of a philosopher.